


Grieving

by saltymermaid



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 01:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6591682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltymermaid/pseuds/saltymermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adrien's thoughts after word of Marinette's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grieving

**Author's Note:**

> A girl at my school killed herself yesterday. I knew her. I'm still processing, and I needed to grieve somehow. I guess I wrote this as a sort of coping mechanism. A lot of Adrien's thoughts are my own put into his head, but even so, it should be pretty in character. I'm sorry if this is messy. I didn't really edit, and it's a little hard for me to think right now. Thank you for reading.

He doesn’t understand.

Try as he might, he doesn’t understand.

He first heard the news in the back of his limo. He had just gotten back from a photoshoot, and hadn’t been able to get to his phone for the two hours full of posing and fake smiles. When he finally plugged in his headphones and looked at his notifications, he saw he has two text messages. One from Alya, and one from Nino. Both of them said the same thing.

‘Did you hear about Marinette?’

He shot both both the same response, a simple ‘no, what happened,’ before settling back into his seat, figuring it was nothing major, perhaps another disagreement with Chloe.

Nino responded first, within thirty seconds of Adrien’s question.

‘Oh Adrien,’ the message said, ‘she killed herself tonight.’

In that moment, it seemed like the world stopped. A lead wieght settled onto his stomach, and a pressure hammered into the back of his eyes.

_She killed herself._

He would never see her smile in the hallway again, her smile that made her eyes crinkle at the edges and him feel like he’s welcome into her life.

_She killed herself._

He would never again see her blush as he complimented her design skills, her blush that’s filled with pride and embarassment and pure joy.

_She killed herself._

He would never get her to laugh at one of his cheesy jokes again, her sweet, intoxitating giggle.

_She killed herself._

He would never be able to see her dance at the school formal again, her dancing feet twirl around as if she has all of the confidence in the world.

_She killed herself._

She’s dead.

Marinette is dead.

He never really tried to get to know her. He reaped the benefits of her prescence without having to put in the real work of friendship. He got to see the good parts of her, the smiling, shining pieces, all polished and ready for outside eyes without working to talk through the ugly bits, the sharp edges that ran the risk of cutting him up inside. Yes, he was a selfish friend to her, if a friend at all.

He can’t remember the last time he really asked her how she was doing. Really tried to get her to let him in. He had been satisfied with the shallow hellos and goodbyes, fluttering fingers and conversations about nothing really, just surface, just floating.

Nathalie asks him if he saw the signs, if he knew she was sad. How could he know if she was sad if he only ever saw her happy? God, he had been so ignorant. He wonders now that if he had looked into her eyes, really looked, really tried to see, if he would see the desperation of someone ready to give up on life.

Did the people close to her see the signs? Did her friends, did Alya? Did Alya know this was going to happen? How is Alya feeling now? If he feels so incredibly lost, he can only imagine how Alya, someone who was really friends with Marinette, must feel. Adrien had simply been in the front row of Marinette’s life while Ayla had been right on stage with her. He should probably call her, see if she’s holding up okay, but he can’t find the strength to. He can’t shoulder another person’s grief along with his own.

His phone is dinging, dinging, but he doesn’t have the energy to check. It’s only seven o’clock, but he’s already turned his lights off, trying to convince his father he’s sleeping. His music is pumping, pumping in his ears. He hasn’t turned it off since the news of Marinette’s death reached him. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever turn it off. No sound means silence, and silence means thought, it means a chance for him to really process all that’s happened, to roll it over in his mind and try to understand.

He doesn’t think he wants to understand.

Marinette is dead and all he can think about is how he doesn’t want to think about it.

A song makes it’s way up the headphone wire and into his head. _Little Do You Know_ by Alex and Sierra.

The harmonies and lilts of the music makes his stomach churn and his breathing ragged, and he hits the skip button with a force he didn’t know he had.

It used to be one of his favorite songs.

It was the song that was playing when Nino told him Marinette was dead.

He hates that song now.

He finds himself thinking she’s brave, somehow. That she had the willpower to do it. To end it all. The thought bubbles up a laugh within him, even though it’s not funny. Before, if you had asked him, he would have told you that suicide is the ultimate cowardice. Now, though? Now, he’s not so sure.

It seems as if she would have had to be awfully strong to hold the knife to her wrist, or the gun to her head, or the rope to her throat.

He didn’t even know how she did it.

One of his classmates is dead, and he doesn't even know how she killed herself.

He doesn't know why, either. He had thought she was happy. He had thought she had everything anyone could ask for. She was pretty and clever and well known and well liked. If he’s brutally honest with himself, he knows that he had been jealous of her. Jealous of the everything that he had made her life out to be. Is that why he never bothered to get to know her? Because he was jealous?

Marinette had always been kind to him. During class discussions, she would listen to him without interrupting, nod and process his opinion before voicing her own, always being sure to be respectful to him, even if her own thoughts may differ from his. Outside of the classroom she was kind to him as well, always offering him a wave and a smile as they passed each other. She was always sure to say his name when she greeted him. He could never explain why, but it always meant so much to him that she knew his name.

It struck him as funny that it was so easy to switch her over to past tense. It had happened in no less than an instant. Marinette no longer existed in present tense. Marinette will forever be wases, hads, and used tos. Did that make him cold? Did anyone else find this transition of tenses so incredibly brainless?

He finally checks his phone again, the wretched device that had brought him the Marinette’s death in the first place.

He’s in a group chat with some other kds from school, an ultimate frisbee team he plays with on the weekends, and they’re sending funny pictures of each other back and forth, laughing about what idiotic faces they’ve made together. They are just words on a screen, but he still finds the ‘lmaos’ and all caps type incredibly loud. He scrolls up, and he finds no mention of Marinette anywhere in the chat. Do they not care? Does it not matter to them that one of their classmates, a girl they used to see everyday is dead?

He has notifications from another group chat, this one a prayer group. They’re all talking about how much Marinette needed Jesus, and how they’ll be praying for her, and a wave of white hot anger pours over him. How dare they talk about how she needed saving. How dare they offer up their cheap Christly words and pat him on the back with half hearted prayers. Marinette is _dead_. All of the Jesus and prayers in the world can’t help her now.

Nathalie assures him that this is not his fault, that there was nothing he could’ve done to help her. But she doesn’t know that. Not for certain, anyways. Perhaps if he had just tried harder, if he had just pushed for friendship a little more, if he had laid his strong hands on her back and told her how important she was, she would still be here. Maybe she would still exist in the present tense.

His father reminds him to eat, to drink, to take care of himself, an order rather than words of sympathy. Oh, what a one track mind people must have, that even in the face of the death of somone as special as Marinette, all they can bring themselves to focus on the living more than the dead. Her death matters far more than his life. He could care less if he remembers to eat dinner. What really matters is that Marinette is dead.

She’s dead. Why is she dead? Why did she kill herself, why did she give up, what drove her to this, what convinced her that the only possible solution to whatever was plaguing her was to no longer exist at all?

Did she think that she had no one to turn to? Did she forget about Alya, about her parents? Did she think she had no future? Did she lose sight of her own brilliance and talent?

He doesn’t understand. He _can’t_ understand.

Is it wrong of him to think that she's lucky? That perhaps, all in all, she had chosen the best way to die? She no longer had to suffer. She no longer had to feel tears roll down her face. She no longer had to feel the overwhelming hardship that was breathing. And, perhaps best of all, her death guarantees that no one speaks ill of her from beyond the grave. After all, people can hardly say something shitty about you if you killed yourself.

He wonders when her funeral is. He wonders if he’ll be invited. He won't be surprised if he isn't. But he finds himself hoping that he is invited, that he’ll get to see her eyes one more time, although they’ll be cold and lifeless.

If he does go, he’ll wear his black button down. Marinette had complimented him on that, once, had said that it looked good on him. He would like her to approve of the outfit he wears to see her get put into the ground.

His heart is heavy as he wakes up Plagg, tears press at the inside of his eyes as he calls out for a transformation.

He plugs in his headphones once more when the green light of his transformation fades from around him, and tucks his phone into his pocket as he heads out the window. Perhaps he’ll be lucky enough to see Ladybug tonight. Though it wouldn’t be Marinette’s smile, it would be close enough. Ladybug, at least, will be truly happy. Ladybug won’t have given up on life like Marinette had. Ladybug will be there. Ladybug will exist in the present tense.

She has to.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry guys, I'm working on the final chapter of DYLM? and the beginning of Colors, I just need some time to process this.
> 
> As always, if you want to reach me, my tumblr is at saltymermaid.tumblr.com


End file.
